Paddy Links

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Thanks to a lot of testing and push from our German users (after Paddy was featured in a local internet show on digital photography), I was able to significantly improve the keyword handling. The experience should be better, foreign characters are handled correctly (as long as they are ANSI - so German, French, Danish works, Russian, Japanese etc doesn't). Also, Paddy now recognizes the keywords that Lightroom tagged as Synonyms as asks the user what to do with them.

This was likely the last big update to Paddy for LR 4, bar any bugfixes, which I will of course always try to do. The next two weeks I will be moving (from house to temporary apartment), then I will need to focus any significant paddy activity on LR 5. I will try to get an updated Nocturn video out, as well as an video on how to use the XBox controller, and if I am bored I iwll try to work on the user guide, but compared to the challenge that LR 5 brings, these ar eboring.

Friday, April 19, 2013

I think I found a way, but it will be a lot of work, and I have to move over to C# for some stuff.

To make a long story short, I think I found a way to make this work in the new, dynamic LR 5 interface. But it will be lots of work, and it doesn't solver the Midi Out problem - Midi (and IPAD) will be blessfully unaware of any slider positions until the subpanels have been opened at least once. After that, no problem 9I think, cross your fingers), as most handles stay static once created.

The stupid exception as before is of course the HSL panel. LR "destroys" the controls as you switch around there. But we had that issue before.

It will be a lot of work to do this as I am quite literally analyzing every single control in the interface to get the handle associated with a function.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

So, I looked further into the issue with the slider controls (not even thinking about other issues this creates, like presets). It looks like they are indeed dynamically added when needed. It used to be that a slider had a number that wouldn't change. Now, it can be anything. Example: You open LR with all subpanels closed. Then you open the Effects panel. The first slider here ("Amount") is now Edit1. Now you open the Basic Panel. Now the temperature slider is Edit1 (for JPG - Edit3 for raw, but that was always the case). The Effects slider is now Edit21. And it changes again when other panels open.

This is bad for keyboard shortcuts and disaster for Midi.

The keyboard shortcuts used to work when the subpanels were closed. This will not work any more. Since the controls simply do not exist when the panel isn't open, I have to force the panel open when the user moves the slider. That's bad, but doable.

It's a complete disaster for Midi out, which relies on the fact that the value are available at any point in time. I read them, no matter whether the panel is open or not. Now, the values are simply not available if I don't force all the panels open.

The only good news is that the number never seems to go down. So, creative, I already see several workarounds here. But it will not be pretty.

[Edited: para added]: the second piece of good news is that the handles seem to stay with us. In other words, once I have them I can move the sliders. This gives us several options to work with

My hope is that this is a bug/feature in the beta that will go away in the release.

For those who wonder, I am not in touch with anybody at Adobe - I don't have much time for this this week. I might try to contact whatever support they have for Plugins, but since I am using an officially unsupported route, I am not optimistic

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Just got the LR 5 beta. The face recognition - promised in a survey, more or less - is not there. Some other features are. I leave it to others to pontificate about the radial filter, but I predict we will see a beta 2, given that the listed additions for this beta are underwhelming (maybe other than the advanced healing brush).
Copy/Paste from Adobe

Advanced Healing Brush – Easily remove objects and fix defects—even those with irregular shapes such as threads or lint—with a single brush stroke. Take precise control over what's being removed as you make unwanted objects just disappear.

Upright – Straighten tilted images with a single click. Upright analyzes images and detects skewed horizontal or vertical lines. You choose one of four correction methods, and Upright can even straighten images where the horizon is hidden.

Radial Gradient – Lead your viewer's eye through your images with more flexibility and control. The radial gradient tool lets you create off-center vignette effects, or multiple vignette areas within a single image.

Offline editing with Smart Previews – Easily work with images without bringing your entire library with you. Just generate smaller stand-in files called Smart Previews. Make adjustments or metadata additions to Smart Previews and your changes will be automatically applied to the full-size originals later.

Video slideshow sharing – Easily share your work in elegant video slideshows. Combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD videos that can be viewed on almost any computer or device.

Improved photo book creation – Create beautiful photo books from your images. Lightroom includes a variety of easy-to-use book templates, and now you can edit them to create a customized look. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks.

[edit - the below changed as I explored]
More importantly for us, Paddy 4.3 doesn't work. That is not surprising. Paddy writes directly into Windows controls - and these change when controls get rearranged for a new version. However, they really screwed me this time. The numbering changes over time. For instance, the Temperature box starts out as EDIT1. As you go along and pick tools, it can become anything up to EDIT128 (not quite anything, but details don't matter). This is a massive problem for me - Paddy relies on these edits being stable.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Pushed out an update. We had a bug in the Midi assignments for the BCR/BCF and another one in the raw midi assignment, hopefully that's fixed.

As a bonus, I included V1 of the XBox controller interface. It's not documented yet - you have to go to "External Keyboards" to enable it. If you have a wireless controller, you will also need a receiver for the PC. The rest works as usual. I implemented 10 virtual pages that you can switch.

Also, the sticks are semi-analog - if you map a slider on the joystick, no matter with what function, the speed with which the slider moves depends on how far you push the joystick (there are 3 speeds implemented at the moment, hence semi-analog).